Slashdot Mirror
Growing Consensus: The Higgs Boson Exists
It's a long, slow road from tentative discovery, to various forms of peer review, to wide acceptance, never mind theory and experimental design, but recent years' work to pin down the Higgs Boson seem to be bearing fruit in the form of cautious announcements. FBeans writes with excerpts from both the New York Times ("Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.") and from The Independent ("Cern says that confirming what type of boson the particle is could take years and that the scientists would need to return to the Large Hadron Collider — the world's largest 'atom smasher' — to carry out further tests. This will measure at what rate the particle decays and compare it with the results of predictions, as theorised by Edinburgh professor Peter Higgs 50 years ago.")
What is this Higgs Bosun?
The name of the particle is the Higgs Boson. The article title is incorrectly using the possessive form.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
G'day skippa!
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Thank's for all your hard work, editor's.
You know we're going to see this headline:
"Scientists prove that God exists."
Scary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bigg Bosoms
so, what do you call the belief on way or the other as to if the boson exists or does not? :)
Consensus (ie. human agreement) isn't part of the scientific method. All you need is that your experiment be repeatable by others and that your measured results be statistically significant within all the relevant bounds of experimental error.
If other teams witness the same results as you then you might be tempted to call that "consensus", but you'd be wrong. Human opinion and agreement doesn't enter into it. The desired level of agreement is a mathematical property of the observations, not the agreement of humans.
If I understand this correctly, the Higgs is what gives particles their mass. Is there anyway we could influence them somehow to reduce the mass of a particle?
Have they measured it yet?
Some headlines read: Physicists found GOD particle'
Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson - this is the actual story headline and a story.
Quote:
They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."
I thought about the significance of saying that and as an atheist, it doesn't mean anything for me, it just means some silly nick name. God-particle, glue-particle, whatever-particle.
I realised though that it is not how many people see it! There are millions of people who are quite religious and to them this really is something different, the religious zealots are selling the idea that scientists have discovered god!
This is a huge marketing propaganda campaign, the religious leaders will be able to point at this and tell their followers: you see, even scientists believe in god!
This is a very counter-productive, a terrible thing to do for the scientists to go along with this. They are truly doing a disservice to the entire thinking segment of the population by feeding into this propaganda. Is this the way for them to justify all the spending, to sell to the millions of religious fanatics that they "discovered god" (because that's all that the religious fanatics will hear: scientists discovered god).
This was the wrong way to go.
You can't handle the truth.
The Higg's give Fermions (Matter Particles) their "REST MASS" only. The relativistic mass of particles is something different.
Dear Lord... the creature's power comes from electricity | radiation | tachyons | nanobots | god particles!
crazy dynamite monkey
Or would that be putting Descartes before the force?
How does the Higgs Boson giver mass to other particles?
And some other interesting questions:
How is a Higgs Boson produced?
Can we produce these particles at will?
Can we affect gravity with them?
Flying cars, invisibility, peace in the Middle East, FTL travel, consensus on the original lyrics to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"?
What?
Also, can the Large Hadron Collider be used to find small and medium Hadrons?
[ Seriously CERN, think about multipurpose usefulness once in a while. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No doubt this "consensus" is based on just as much evidence as the "consensus" around global warming. Gotta wonder how long until these scientists start requesting **billions** more dollars to look for another invisible magic fairy particle. Can we really trust people who's living requires endless taxpayer handouts?
Ron Paul 2016
"Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle"
great I'll tell the pope that the physicists are now true believers
"generally accepted scientific fact" = consensus --- otherwise, what's the "generally accepted" part? There is no stronger scientific definition of "fact" that transcends a general consensus based on a multitude of apparently properly done confirming experiments.
O Mighty Higg.
Bow down and worship The Higg. We don't know what it is yet, but bow down and worship it.
... physicists celebrate mass.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I did not really see that number stated in the various articles. I read that the US Tevatron saw a 'hint" of Higgs with three possible events.
The other thing I read in Physics Today is there are six classes and over thirty ways the Higgs can decay. Some ways are easier to see with current detectors than others. The July 4 announccment was based on at least two decay modes. The more modes the more confidence.
Any one seen a Higgs Boson weapon in any games yet?
... that the boson belonged to Mr. Higg all this time (subject typo)
Is this how we do science now? I get it when it's anti-science, we form a consensus and deny everything we don't like. But this?
There is no aphostrophe in "Higgs Boson".
It's named after a dude, whose name is Higgs. Nothing possessive here.
...no, no -- that's not how it's going to be "picked up".
Let's take a look:
NBC News: Particle confirmed as Higgs boson
Associated Press: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson
Reuters: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN
Wall Street Journal: New Data Boosts Case for Higgs Boson Find
FOX News: Physicists say they have found long-sought Higgs boson
Washington Post: A closer look at the Higgs boson particle that helps explain what gives matter size and shape
Chicago Tribune: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN
Sky News: Higgs Boson: Experts Sure Of 'God Particle'
New York Daily News: Physicists say they have discovered crucial subatomic particle known as Higgs boson
Boston Globe: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson
BBC (UK): LHC cements Higgs boson identification
BusinessWeek: Case for Higgs Boson Strengthened by New CERN Analysis
The Daily Mail (UK): Scientists say they HAVE found the 'God particle' - but admit they still aren't sure what type of Higgs boson it is
The Independent (UK): Have they found the Higgs boson at last? Cern physicists say they're confident of 'God particle' breakthrough
Telegraph (UK): Higgs boson: scientists confident they have discovered the 'God particle'
News Limited (AU): Higgs boson, the God particle, discovered by CERN
US News and World Report: Physicists Observe Higgs Boson, the Elusive 'God Particle'
None of these articles make any links to "God" other than a few -- mostly UK, not US -- sources referring to it as the so-called "God particle", but even those explain exactly what this particle is theorized to be, not anything supernatural, "proving God exists", or having anything whatever to do with God.
Bitching about spelling and grammar like Bosun and Higg's with the apostrophe.
This post is still far better written then anything from the Huffington Post, a company of barely literate Gen Y'rs trying to write the "news" on their iPhones in between Tweets and popping Ritalin and Red Bull.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Belief doesn't come into it. The Higgs' existence (or not) is determined through very careful experimental observation and measurement.
Belief is something that primitive people used to hold in high esteem before the dawn of science. They used to read tea leaves and chicken entrails too.
Unfortunately there are still a lot of primitive people around, unable to face hard facts and precise logic, and unwilling to seek a cure for their extremely severe mental delusion. Not sure what humanity will do about them as we move ever further into a scientific world.
Also known as the god damn particle for its ability to create zombies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luNueXoAw3I
theories can be useful. the standard model is useful for predicting the outcome of experiments. these Higgs boson results are a part of that. there are actually several theories about the Higg boson's properties (such as spin and decay rate & products), and more research will tell which of those models are useful. science is about useful models, you want Truth go next door to Philosophy department.
All other elementary particles have names ending in -on and are derived from Greek. None of them honor their inventor.
So what should this new boson be called?
All these government scientists know they can keep getting grant money toeing the standard modelist line.
And besides, even if the Higgs Field does exist, it doesn't prove the theory is correct, so why should we be spending millions of dollars to change textbooks when there is nothing we can do with this knowledge anyway.
When the electron was discovered, it could have also, and naively been considered useless. However here we are commenting on the latest discovery of science, utilising that very knowledge. The point is, you don't know what will be usefull and what won't be useful. Besides it's fun, interesting and nearly always useful to learn how the universe works. The internet was made at CERN, you could say as a result of this research. So.....
Its not perfect replication, but the LHC has 2 multipurpose exeriments ATLAS and CMS. They a 2 separate teams of people, using different detectors of different designs, different software and different analysis techniques. The do share some systems, ie the same proton beam (so a miss calculation in the beam energy will effect them both (not that it matters a huge amount for proton collisions)), they sometimes work in the same buildings, and they go to the same canteens.
They both see the same bump in their data in multiple channels. scientists dont really use the word proof. but it is fairly clear that there is a particle at ~125 GeV, that behaves very much like the boson predicted by theory. hopefully soon we'll have an e+e- collider that will see the same thing.
The Higgs field is part of the a particular formulation of quantum field theory that is often called the Standard Model. There are lots of other quantum field theories, and other theories that are not field theories, not quantum theories, or both, that may or may not have any relation to reality.
The existence of a Higgs particle in a particular energy range, detectable by such and such means, is a hypothesis, motivated by theory called the Standard Model, other more speculative theories which may one day be incorporated into the standard model, and practicality (most of the theorized Higgs particles are simply out of reach of our collider building capabilities).
Making the particular observations specified by the hypothesis supports that hypothesis, and also the theory that originated the hypothesis. These observations have already been replicated, by the way. Making other observations specified by the hypothesis will further support it. Currently we have decent evidence for a particle, but not so much evidence about whether it has the specific properties required to be the Higgs particle predicted by the theory.
Theories are not accepted hypotheses! Particularly not in physics. Unfortunately this erroneous definition seems to have made it into several dictionaries. Of course, people who write dictionaries are almost never scientists.
It links to an AP story with the headline "Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson", which says...
The Higgs is merely a liberal myth to get funding from big government by Photoshoping particle path photos using smelly hippie open-source software to claim they almost detected it.
Next those commie atheist Sharia liberal hippies will tell you that subatomic particles work the same way inside poor people that they do inside wealthy job creators!
Equality of physics? What's next, free sunshine?
And those damned neutrinos CANNOT go through us Republicans. We have guns! Neutrinos only pass through surrendering cowards!
Table-ized A.I.
Anything that needs a "growing consensus" makes me "suspicious".
A bo's'n is a warrant officer in the deck department of Navy ships as well, supervising all sorts of deck activities such as mooring, anchoring, taking on fuel, and standing various watches.
... because it is just more religion disguised as science. The big bang = the biggest crock of horse$hit ever contrived.
The new religions that spring up would have these things in common with the current religions:
1) A belief in one God, or in many Gods, or both at once.
2) A belief in the creation of the world (and of us) by a divine authority.
3) A belief in the necessity of submitting to the divine authority.
4) A belief in the value of making sacrifices to the divine authority.
5) A belief that the church (or whatever it is called) can tell you what the divine authority wants you to do
6) A belief that the divine authority listens to you when you talk to it (even though it doesn't talk back).
7) A code of morality including all the basics (don't kill, don't steal, etc., unless you are doing it to an infidel).
The worlds great religions are alot more alike than different. The names and such vary, but the themes are pretty consistent.
Hmmm, "being replicated at Fermilab" starts out at score +1.
I point out that the Fermilab collider is shut down, and post a link to that effect, and then "being replicated at Fermilab" gets modded up +4.
Great job, moderators!
The Higgs (...) boson gives fermions and several bosons (including itself) their intrinsic mass.
The Higgs boson does not give itself or anything else mass.
Interaction with the Higgs field gives fundamental particles, including the Higgs boson, their intrinsic mass. A Higgs boson is just an excitation of the Higgs field that is interesting to us only because it evinces the existence of the field.
There aren't Higgs bosons all over the universe giving everything mass; it takes a hell of a lot of effort to bring a Higgs boson into a brief existence, which is why we need these huge high-energy colliders. In fact it takes so much energy to make a Higgs boson that the Higgs boson has a much higher mass than many of the fundamental particles (mass is just energy, rest mass is just total energy minus kinetic energy), so it wouldn't make any sense for really heavy Higgs bosons to give really light particles their mass.
The Higgs boson isn't even responsible for all or even most intrinsic mass. Most of the mass of ordinary matter is found in the binding energies holding fundamental particles together into the compound particles that most ordinary matter is made up out of. Every time a particle interacts with a field, it loses some of its kinetic energy and gains rest mass. Rest mass comes from interactions between what would otherwise be massless particles moving at light speed. Mass is just energy; when kinetic energy is "lost" in an interaction, and not just transferred to something else, it is converted to rest-mass. Most of the mass of the matter we're familiar with is accounted for by the three known electronuclear interactions (the electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces).
What the Higgs field explains is why, after we have accounted for interactions with all known fields, many of the fundamental particles, all by themselves not apparently interacting with anything, still exhibit rest mass and move slower than light. If they weren't interacting with any fields at all, everything should be massless and moving at lightspeed. The Higgs field is the proposed field which massive fundamental particles are interacting with, which slows them down and gives them mass.
(Rather, it's the field with which the truly fundamental particles interact, causing them to manifest as the massive "fundamental" particles we are familiar with. Our familiar fundamental particles aren't "made of" these other particles, like an atom is made of protons and neutrons, so much as in the absence of a Higgs field there would be fundamental particles with completely different properties in the universe, and the presence of a Higgs field forces the ones we end up seeing as massive to behave differently from their constant interaction with it, appearing as the massive fundamental particles with the properties we are familiar with).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
evolution exists due to consensus not by facts...
When the electron was discovered, it could have also, and naively been considered useless.
I don't really agree with that. The effects and usefulness of the electron - aka electricity - were "discovered" before anyone knew what the electron was. It was already useful before the exact mechanism (the electron) was even understood. The practical came long before the theory and the full understanding of the physics.
Better known as 318230.
Are you that stupid? History of science is full of examples of knowledge that finally became usefull. Furthermore, it is logically impossible to know the use of something before you even know this thing exists.
Go back to school, it would serve you better than posting stupid claims here.
This is clear proof that god exists
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Discovering that which the maths already shows exists is hardly a great discovery. Or perhaps some of you are dumb enough to think maths (in a fundamental sense) can be wrong.
...or right. As Bertrand Russell said, Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.". The full paragraph in which that appears explains in more detail:
Shorter Bertrand Russell: math is all about making some assumptions for the lulz and seeing what comes out the other end, not about Truth-with-a-capital-T.
(And Gödel's incompleteness theorem indicates that no set of assumptions is sufficient to let you prove or disprove every possibly "this is what comes out the other end" statement.)
Here's a fact. In the early days of nuclear science, the 'neutron' was considered a 'state secret' and its existence was missing from public science books of the time.
I guess by 1932 the "early days of nuclear science" had passed.
"which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape"
Size and shape eh? Great reporting.
"When the electron was discovered, it could have also, and naively been considered useless"
Incorrect. The electron was a new model for an already widely used field. The electron was "discovered" in 1897. ConEdison was selling power in 1882.
"The point is, you don't know what will be useful and what won't be useful"
Sure we do. We know everything about this boson already, except its mass. We even know that mass within fine limits, so even that is uninteresting. If it was much heavier, for instance, that would have significant effects on the far future of the universe. But it's not, so it won't.
This is a serious case of intellectual masterbation. But it's the only particle left in the Standard Model, and there's nothing else to work on, so
Discovering that which the maths already shows exists is hardly a great discovery. Or perhaps some of you are dumb enough to think maths (in a fundamental sense) can be wrong.
Maybe you should learn the difference between a sound argument and a valid argument. Regardless of how rigorous and flawless the math is, if the inputs and assumptions were wrong, the results of the math can be wrong. That is the point of making such measurements. It doesn't matter how good your math is, if you start with Newtonian gravity you will find places that the results of the math disagree with reality.
Here's a fact. In the early days of nuclear science, the 'neutron' was considered a 'state secret' and its existence was missing from public science books of the time.
Funny, it shows up in the vintage physics text book I have from 1939. Searches show discussion of neutrons shows up in things like Life magazine in the 30s and 40s. There are quite a few journal articles with detailed properties and effects caused by neutrons, that would have been publicly accessible in the same time period. There was definitely some blackouts of research on uranium and thing specific to bomb design, but not even close for neutrons in general.
Scientific concepts MUST be mathematically robust- which means that must be capable of emulation on a Turing Complete Computer.
One, you don't seem to understand what is necessary to be mathematically robust. Second, in the end you can't declare the universe has to be some way by fiat. That isn't science, that would be the natural philosophy of yore. Regardless of what you say, the universe could end being computable with a Turing machine or not, or be analogous to a probabilistic Turing machine or something else yet.
That goes back to the beginning, with the garbage-in-garbage-out issue of math. Regardless of how correct your math derivations are, if the starting point disagrees with what the universe already does, the results will be ultimately be incorrect and disagree with an observation.
So.. it only took 300 years, to prove all the alchemists right ..but in order to do so, we needed to make it look "scientific an all, eh?" So we now call "The Ether" the "Higgs-Boson" ....
Like.. er.. wow...
The peanut gallery wants to be on record as being adamantly opposed to the idea of the Higgs Boson. (Just as I was on record when the whole physics world went nuts over faster-than-light neutrinos, and I was one of the few voices of reason.) As I have posted multiple times on slashdot, mass and gravity are quantum path phenomena. Why physicists can't see this is, frankly, baffling to me. It's exceedingly obvious that mass and gravity are quantum phenomena. Anybody that understands basic QM knows the idea of path integrals and the MWI. Mass and gravity are simply the result of more universes (and hence, more space) in one direction than another, causing an apparent force. So, basically, Einstein was right. Mass and gravity are due to the existence of additional space. That is my two cents. (Now, please commence the modding down.)
I still don't believe their claims, nor do I find it useful or productive science.